It’s not an industry. I teach at a college (mostly I teach freshman and sophomores). Right now, I have a student who has not turned in 12 of 27 assignments. How is that a failure on MY part?
@OhiBro My mother didn’t want “personal interaction.” She wanted fairness. And not to be exploited. The profession was very questionable on both counts. May millennial women loudly and firmly demand change. Cos change is needed.
@katliamom , there is nothing unfair about the engineering profession. Your mother just worked with a bunch of you-know-whats. Those are found in every profession.
Some have observed that you-know-whats with respect to judging co-workers by gender are common in many workplaces.
https://newrepublic.com/article/119239/transgender-people-can-explain-why-women-dont-advance-work
If someone knows a married couple with similarly high ambitions in greedy professions, you may want to advise a young woman to become a high-earning breadwinner and a husband to cut back/become a SAHD. I say this because I am aware of 'greedy" junior-level positions which would only hire a woman or a minority applicant - no exceptions. If the trend continues (I am pretty sure it would, but the scale and the timing may vary), it would be more difficult for some young women to cut back or stay home with underemployed or unemployed husbands. Alternatively, some couples may opt for a more “normal” 40-50 hrs workweek for a lower pay of 100K, which would bring their family situation closer to more enlightened countries (though their combined income would still be higher)
I was intrigued by the statements about the other countries, so I did some searches. It looks like the difference in gender wage gaps between different countries is significant, but not substantial at the family level given that many countries with lower gender wage gap also have substantially lower average salaries
https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm#indicator-chart
https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/average-wages.htm#indicator-chart
I also wondered specifically about greedy professions (i.e. highly influential jobs with high earning power and long work hours), since this was the topic of the article. I had difficult time finding information about women law or finance executives in other countries, possibly because these industries are less lucrative, or women (have opportunities to) choose this path less commonly (I am only guessing here, and would like to learn more). From what I could tell, situations for women lawyer executives are similar between the UK, Canada and United States (though the way the data is reported precludes direct comparisons). There are somewhat similar problems in France and Germany, but information is very limited. https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-law/
“go one step further to say that anyone doing a poor job in any profession is probably in a low stress environment”
The difference is that teaching in public school is one of the few professions where it’s very very difficult for you to be fired even when doing a poor job. That simple fact does it less stressful than many jobs.
@OhiBro - To be fair I think both men and women can get tired of the Engineering field and leave to go into finance, business etc.
@roethlisburger-That is outside the scope of this thread. Also, that doesn’t really explain how teaching is a “low-stress” job.
In manufacturing, if there is a high failure rate in the product quality, you can be more selective about the raw material.
I have a D in one of the “greedy” professions - IB. Like Oldfort posted, 12+ hour days are standard. I believe it is slightly better than in years past as most of the major investment banks now require their analysts to stay away from the office one day a week. At my D’s NYC firm the analysts must leave by 7pm on Friday and are not allowed in the office on Saturdays. Depending on what deal she is working on, she may or may not work Sundays. Lately, she’s been working most Sundays. But she views this job as a means to an end. She’s putting in the hours now so that down the road at a subsequent job she will hopefully have more flexibility. The IB analysts in her “class” will all work two years for the IB and then move on to Private Equity, Venture Capital or Corporate Development jobs.
Interestingly, my S is an Accounting Manager at mid-size company and he puts in comparable hours to D’s, albeit not every week and he does work a lot from home, something that is not available to her due to the nature of the deals she works on.
I have to say, this doesn’t seem that much different from the route I took - IT Operations then on to Cybersecurity. I was on call a lot and logged many hours after the kids were in bed and on weekends.
@oldfort - I appreciate your candor in posting about your D’s experience in IB. The whole accounting/finance/IB world is something I don’t know much about.
@roethlisburger You need to come teach our lower level kids for a year or so and help them graduate! To make sure you’re prepared, look up things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, how to get kids off drugs, how to improve home life (or work around it), how to convince students who have already become dealers that it’s worth it to earn less money by working in school and trying to go to college/trade school for a lower paying job, how to find super scholarships for above average, but not tippy top lower economic students so they can go on to college or trade schools making high school important, and how to overcome peer/neighborhood/family pressure to not do well as that happens among some groups too.
Once you’ve taught for a year or two, then come back and tell us how everyone should blame the teacher.
I definitely won’t say all teachers are awesome - they’re human just like everyone else - but most not cut out for teaching learn this pretty quickly and move on to other fields - just like we have engineers (males) who ended up teaching instead of engineering. We have a dude who is/was a PA too. He found he liked teaching better than working with patients. He’s one of our best teachers. Plenty of adults figure out who they are on the job when they see all it entails.
@roycroftmom One of my lads worked as a counselor for a summer camp geared for these kids thinking he’d want to head that direction for a job. The stories he told were incredibly sad. Kids outright told him they wished they had his life, but they only had it for a week, then had to return to their own. He saw some who would have been good at academics, but when he tried to tell them this was their way “out,” they told him he was crazy. Maybe it would work in his area, but in theirs they’d be shot if they did well in school. Not all that long before there was a straight A lad who had been shot in our state - the news was wondering why as he seemed to have a good future. I’ve thought of that poor lad even since wondering if that’s why he was targeted.
My guy burned out - in one summer. Trying to do something was too draining. He could make a difference for a week, but he knew he couldn’t really make a difference.
D1 started as an analyst at her bank. She said there are only a hand full of women left. A lot of them moved on after 2-3 years. She is the youngest director at her bank and is hoping for the MD promotion in 2-3 years (my humble brag). She was lucky she had some very good mentors, especially her boss. Sitting on the trading floor, her boss would shout out to her sometimes, “elbows out” when he thought some guys were pushing her around. He also made sure guys were not too familiar with her when they entertained clients.
@SyrAlum - if your daughter enjoys the work, tell her to stick it out. It is usually rough the first few years (analyst - associate), but it does get better and it can be very lucrative (not everyone can cut it).
My three kids, and their spouses/significant others, find the goal of work life balance is one of their highest priorities.
Oldest is an elementary level special ed teacher in a low income, urban school where most kids arrive speaking limited English. Most parents are immigrants. The pay in the district he is in is very high. He is finishing his masters part time and works extremely long hours at the moment. Fairly sure he’ll take a suburban job closer to their home when they have children of their own. He literally has his head down, powering through a few years of very long hours to get to a place of balance.
His wife quit a high paying but soul sucking job and started her own business 18 months ago. It has taken off and is doing better than her original business plan. By the time S1 finishes his masters they expect her business will be solid, with a good client base. They are planning to start a family around that time.
S2 is halfway through medical school and is looking for a specialty that will provide work life balance. He’s lucky in that he has no undergrad debt, and has a full tuition scholarship from his medical school. He has taken out loans for living expenses only. He is absolutely not interested in the power specialties that pay a lot but also involve long hours.
His significant other (married in every aspect except the license) is a lawyer. She took a state job as an assistant county prosecutor when she passed her boards. She earns less than she otherwise could, but loves the work, and has reasonable hours. Again, she is happy to give up the pay for a more balanced life.
Our youngest graduates in two weeks. She changed her major from a STEM-y bad fit major to English. She has a (low paying but flexible hours) job in editing lined up, and will be coaching a high school team in the sport she played through her college years. She was much, much happier as soon as she switched majors.
Her boyfriend switched directions from pure Chemistry, which was easy for him, but he didn’t particlarly like. He added art history (double major) after a lot of soul searching after his mother passed away. He is aiming for art restoration as a career after grad school.
The same newspaper that published the article discussed here, published one yesterday that is in many ways arguing the opposite:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/opinion/sunday/conservative-women.html
There are political views to step around in it here, but much of it is directly related to this conversation.
[quote] Marriage has become less appealing in part because of the “two-income trap,”
In the bottom tier, marriage is disappearing as lower-income women have too few men with solid jobs to choose from and as the growing number of men without regular work — by one analysis, 20 percent of prime-age males were not working full time at the start of 2018 — are being cut out of the marriage market altogether.
In the top tier, college-educated women feel they can’t afford to take time off from their careers to raise their children even when they want to, as many of them do.
[/quote]
I don’t agree with the author about the causes of this issue but I do join her in sadness over the loss of (the middle class) being able to support a family on one income, while leaving a lot of time for one or both parents to take care of children and home and community.
@roethlisburger, where do you (or where did you) teach school? I’m wondering about this place where being a teacher is “low stress”?
Can you show me the sources for the notion that teaching ability = high school graduation rates of students? How is this cause and effect to be evaluated? For example, Jimmy Jones fails to graduate from high school. Which teacher shall we fire for being “poor performing”? His last teacher? His first teacher? His math teacher but not his English teacher from eighth grade? Every teacher with whom he has come into contact?
The problem is that to be able to address certain business needs , you do have to be available, and that cuts into personal time , family time.
I returned to the job force this year and my coworkers were all younger than I am. They had school pick up, kids getting sick , getting sick from the kids’sicks, school and extra curricular events, date nights with SO, home time, gardening , home improvements, baby sitting issues, etc etc.
I didn’t. I filled in for a lot of them and ended up with full time + hours because all that stuff was pervasive and extensive. I also got the lions share of new clients just because I was there. Got some of their clients too because I was there. It makes a difference.
The NY Times posted above by @OhioMom2 is very topical to this discussion and I highly recommend it. A couple things that jumped out at me:
^^^ Which still boils down to how much money one feels they must have. Do they want to work 24/7 to earn as much as possible or are other things in life important to them?
It’s nice when individuals can decide this, not bosses.
It’s one of the best things about having the jobs we do with my flexibility and H being his own boss.
When I first read the original article, I tried to think of peers who seemed to “have it all”…the high level career and connected family life. About 8 families came to mind quickly, and they all had either a spouse who didn’t work or who had a part time or flex/work from home job, OR one spouse has their own business.
This is an interesting study which suggests that on average women “value time outside of work more than men, and also have greater demand for schedule predictability and controllability”
https://scholar.harvard.edu/bolotnyy/publications/why-do-women-earn-less-men-evidence-bus-and-train-operators-job-market-paper
But one might ask whether this is the chicken or the egg, in the context of the two NY Times articles.